136 WAYSIDE AND WOODLAND BLOSSOMS. 



Leguminous plant, and its flowers greatly resemble those of the 

 pea. They are white, sweet-scented, and gathered into a long, 

 pendulous raceme, like that of the laburnum : May and June. 

 The tree is sensitive, and on a branch being touched the 

 leaves will all incline towards the branch, whilst each leaflet 

 advances half-way towards its opposite fellow. The same 

 movements occur at sunset, the leaflets then remaining folded 

 face to face until dawn. The fruit (shown in figure) is that form 

 of pod called a lomentum, in which the valves are constricted 

 between the seeds. 



The genus is named in honour of Jean Robin, a French 

 botanist, whose son cultivated the first specimens of K. 

 pseudacacia in Europe. 



The Ash (Fraxinus excelsior). 



One of the most pleasing in growth of our forest trees is the 

 Ash, its grey trunk rising to eighty or a hundred feet, and its 

 sweeping branches, the lower ones bending upwards at the 

 tips, clothed with the gracefully curving long pinnate leaves. 

 The character of these compound leaves and their leaflets is 

 well shown in our illustration, together with two clusters of the 

 winged fruits. 



The Ash is a native of Britain, although most of the 

 specimens we meet in woods and plantations have been reared 

 in a nursery and planted out. There are many cultivated 

 varieties of F. excelsior; and a large number of species have 

 been introduced during the present and last centuries, chiefly 

 from S. Europe and N. America. Ash and Privet are the only 

 native representatives of the order Oleacese, to which the Olive 

 belongs. It cannot be said that Fraximis excelsior is a 

 typical representative of the order, since most species included 

 in it bear flowers composed of all the floral organs, whereas 

 excelsior has neither calyx nor corolla. Its flowers appear in 



